Here are some additional sources criticizing the decision-theoretic approach by Deutsch and Wallace:
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: Can Savage Salvage Everettian Probability? Huw Price's critique.
Probability in the Everett World: Comments on Wallace and Greaves Huw Price again
Decision Theory is a Red Herring for the Many Worlds Interpretation Jacques Mallah's thorough rebuttal of the approach by Wallace et al.
Everett and the Born Rule Alastair Rae's rebuttal.
One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, probability, and scientific confirmation Adrian Kent's contribution
Decision Theory is a Red Herring for the Many Worlds Interpretation Jacques Mallah's thorough rebutle of the approach by Wallace et al.
This guy has me at the title. To be honest I'd be satisfied with it even if the contents consisted of "No, realy, wtf are these guys smoking? They have this all backwards!"
The subject has already been raised in this thread, but in a clumsy fashion. So here is a fresh new thread, where we can discuss, calmly and objectively, the pros and cons of the "Oxford" version of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
This version of MWI is distinguished by two propositions. First, there is no definite number of "worlds" or "branches". They have a fuzzy, vague, approximate, definition-dependent existence. Second, the probability law of quantum mechanics (the Born rule) is to be obtained, not by counting the frequencies of events in the multiverse, but by an analysis of rational behavior in the multiverse. Normally, a prescription for rational behavior is obtained by maximizing expected utility, a quantity which is calculated by averaging "probability x utility" for each possible outcome of an action. In the Oxford school's "decision-theoretic" derivation of the Born rule, we somehow start with a ranking of actions that is deemed rational, then we "divide out" by the utilities, and obtain probabilities that were implicit in the original ranking.
I reject the two propositions. "Worlds" or "branches" can't be vague if they are to correspond to observed reality, because vagueness results from an object being dependent on observer definition, and the local portion of reality does not owe its existence to how we define anything; and the upside-down decision-theoretic derivation, if it ever works, must implicitly smuggle in the premises of probability theory in order to obtain its original rationality ranking.
Some references:
"Decoherence and Ontology: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love FAPP" by David Wallace. In this paper, Wallace says, for example, that the question "how many branches are there?" "does not... make sense", that the question "how many branches are there in which it is sunny?" is "a question which has no answer", "it is a non-question to ask how many [worlds]", etc.
"Quantum Probability from Decision Theory?" by Barnum et al. This is a rebuttal of the original argument (due to David Deutsch) that the Born rule can be justified by an analysis of multiverse rationality.